'be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt'
Calliope is walking through the night market when she spots the first weapon made line across the wood of some poor merchants booth. The second is around the corner, another slash of soot and dust that stands out like a drop of blood beneath the moon-glow. The last is at her feet as she walks towards the walls of the court where the wilds call out to that wildcat in her heart.
It's the last mark that quickens her steps to a canter and brings a wild white edge to her eyes that sends all the gentle horses of the court back to the shadows when they hear her running across the stone pathways behind them. She's still no more than a specter in the night court, a feral thing with none of Raymond's charm and all of his violence (and then some).
She feels like a lion among horses, a monster against a backdrop of artists, one who will kill to keep their hands covered only in paint that looks red enough to be blood.
Calliope is reckless as she runs though the tall grasses and her belly sinks low enough as she runs to feel the sharp pricks of thistles and weeds against her skin. She runs like a unicorn, horn flashing in the starlight and hooves near silent on the dirt. But she hunts like a lion, nose flaring wide and her teeth look like pearls in the blackness of her face as she peels back her lips when she smells both blood and her red warrior.
There is not a thing in all of Novus that could stop her from following the trail of blood the lines in the gloaming brought her too. And when she runs along the shores of the lake even the water doesn't slow her down when she lets the lapping of the lake announce to the whole of the night: Calliope this way comes.
Her horn looks like a wicked thing when she finds him and it sighs though the night-chill when she brandishes it as the shadows that swallow up any reflections they might cast under the moon. And her eyes look more wicked when she traces every inch of him with her burning, winter gaze and touches her lips to the crusted blood across his cheek.
“This is not your blood.” Calliope's voice is a scratch of lightning across the sky, the first bloom of blinding brightness in the darkness. It thunders both like war-cry and an promise that anger is so very close to the surface of her unicorn skin when Raymond has more secrets to bare.
